After all the electoral dust had settled in Israel last night, it turns out that the party that overperformed expectations in this particular Knesset election was actually Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud. Bibi's Wingnut Cavalcade came in a whopping 8-10 seats ahead of where last week's polls (by Israeli law, no polling data could be released to … Continue reading Four More Wars! Four More Wars!

I stayed up late last night (OK, admittedly I couldn't sleep) writing about the Curious Case of the Missing Vladimir Putin, and lo and behold the guy goes and ruins the whole thing by keeping his public meeting with Kyrgyzstan's President Almazbek Atambaev today in St. Petersburg. While a Russian president meeting with a Kyrgyz … Continue reading OK, Vlad, now it’s personal

Happy Ides of March, everybody! Vox ran a very interesting interview with Cornell Classics Professor Barry Strauss today that is definitely worth a read if you enjoy Roman history.

Well, kids, it looks like your Bibi-Sitter's big trip to Washington didn't really go as planned. Not only did his speech, contrary to its stated purpose, manage to make it less likely that Congress will take action to halt the Iran nuclear talks, but it looks like it didn't even give Bibi the electoral boost … Continue reading Here’s some crazy election drama that isn’t American, for a change

Welcome back to Yemen! Since the last time we were here, previously former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi has decided to drop the "former" from that description. First, on February 21, he escaped his confinement by Yemen's Houthi rebels in Sanaa and fled to the major southern port city of Aden, then a couple … Continue reading Yemen, where they can’t even agree on which city is the capital anymore

There's an interesting internal dispute going on within the Syrian opposition right now that I think really helps to illustrate how difficult it will be for the US to ever successfully cultivate a "moderate" opposition in order to counter ISIS and, eventually, to maybe take on Bashar al-Assad. Lately it seems that Jabhat al-Nusra, currently … Continue reading It’s important to know who your friends are

This is a little blast from the past. It's nice to see that grifting doesn't keep paying off indefinitely: The U.S. Agency for International Development announced Monday that it has suspended one of its largest nonprofit contractors from federal work after investigators found “serious misconduct” in the nonprofit’s performance and management of taxpayer money. ... … Continue reading Cut off

There's been a lot of talk over the past year plus about the risks of a "bad deal" with Iran. "No deal is better than a bad deal," we keep hearing. People are worried that the Obama administration will accept a bad deal if the alternative is no deal, even though the administration keeps insisting … Continue reading How do you define a “bad deal” with Iran?

I'm not one to throw bad folks a lifeline when they're drowning, but can anybody fathom why the Bomb Bomb Iran crowd seems to be doing its best to wreck its own chances of killing a nuclear deal? I don't think they could have created a safer environment for the talks over the past week … Continue reading For Congressional Iran hawks, death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts